The neat trick of "The Elephant Man" is that it starts out, ostensibly, as a play about being a freak and turns out to be a play about being human.

That emotional journey plays out affectingly in the Alley Theatre's solid, often visually striking production - especially in the lead performances of Jay Sullivan as the 19th-century sideshow oddity turned darling of society and Jeffrey Bean as the conscientious doctor who rescues him from the tawdry exhibition circuit and makes a home for him in the relative comfort of London Hospital.

Bernard Pomerance's drama, first seen in London in 1977 and a Tony-winning Broadway hit in 1979, offers a slightly fictionalized account of the final years of Joseph (called "John") Merrick, an Englishman whose face and body were horribly disfigured by disease. In the play, Dr. Frederick Treves is initially intrigued by Merrick's calamitous and unidentifiable illness - but quickly discovers the sensitive soul and keen intellect concealed beneath Merrick's physical deformities and distorted speech. With a famous actress as an early champion, Merrick becomes the toast of society, counting a bishop and a princess among his new friends.

In Pomerance's telling, Merrick's strange saga is both pitiful and inspiring. The play is big on irony - not just the "don't judge a book by its cover" contrast between Merrick's monstrous exterior and his inner saintliness, but also the gulf between Treves' ambitions for his patient and the achievable reality. The more Merrick attains "normality" with proper clothes, polished speech and manners, the greater inroads his disease makes. Treves can never provide, and Merrick can never have, what the patient most desires: to be like other people.

Pomerance's terse, tightly knit script is further bolstered by inherent tension between Merrick, who is natural and instinctive, and Treves, driven by his belief in science, pragmatism and social propriety. Typifying this is the scene in which the actress, Mrs. Kendal, partially disrobes to supply Merrick's one and only moment of intimacy with a woman. Treves intrudes, deems the situation indecent and breaks off the friendship between them.

Perhaps the play's built-in conflicts explain why various productions through the years have been criticized as either too sentimental or too clinical in their treatment.

Director Gregory Boyd's sleekly stylized production seems to split the difference - particularly as presented on Riccardo Hernandez's ingenious setting, a gleaming metallic amalgam of carnival stage and operating room, with a bull's-eye of concentric circles adorning the floor. It's a bit high-tech for the 1880s period, yet somehow strangely apt and effective. The playing is crisp and somewhat methodical, the feelings forceful but kept in check. Boyd adds oomph with his trademark touches, such as the sinister clown beating a drum to open the play.

The central visual innovation, of course, is written into the play. With no special makeup or prosthetics, a "normal" actor must suggest Merrick's crippling deformities through posture, gait, gesture and facial expression.

Sullivan rises admirably to the challenge, with his tilted head, contorted shoulder and hip positioning and halting gait. His vocal characterization is very resourceful, hesitant and thick, with inadvertent yawps of alarm, but warming to understandability as he gains practice and confidence. Most important, Sullivan convinces us of Merrick's rich inner life: his grace, sweetness and complete lack of rancor. He is especially good enacting Merrick's childlike knack for unexpectedly spouting the witty, profound or inexplicably prescient remark.

Jeffrey Bean conveys the well-meaning Treves' sympathetic nature and his growing frustration as circumstances drive home that most disheartening discovery for any scientist - his own limitations.

Elizabeth Bunch brings sparkle, humor and genuine charm to Mrs. Kendal, the other major role. As Bunch is young for the role, she brings perhaps not the customary authority and rueful worldliness. Yet she certainly projects her kindliness and understanding, and no doubt will "deepen" as the run progresses.

Standouts in the able supporting cast (most doing two or three roles) include James Belcher as Merrick's grubbily incorrigible "manager" and Todd Waite as the beaming, blandly benevolent hospital chief.